7. Kurt Cobain

Nirvana's label, DGC Records, had expected to sell 250,000 copies of Nevermind. By the end of 1991, the album was selling at a rate of 400,000 copies a week, and in '92 it eclipsed Michael Jackson on the Billboard charts. Kurt Cobain, the creative influence behind that success — and indeed behind the alternative genre — was never comfortable with being the spokesman for his generation, which may have influenced his final realization that he no longer felt passionate about music. Cobain cemented his cultural immortality with his 1994 suicide (concluding his suicide note: "It's better to burn out than to fade away").